


hoist the colours

by rivergift



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie), Steve Rogers Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22106230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivergift/pseuds/rivergift
Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of Earth, Steve grieves. He doesn't think he can be Captain America without Tony and Nat, but maybe he can manage being a street artist.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	hoist the colours

**Author's Note:**

> So this story was born out of a couple things. The first was that I just wanted to write Nat a funeral. The second was that I could not wrap my head around Steve Rogers going back in time to a girl he hasn’t seen in ten years, abandoning the still very broken world that had just lost two of its biggest heroes, not to mention completely disrupting Peggy’s life without really giving her a choice. The third was that I saw all the gorgeous murals in FFH and thought, hey, who do we know who’s an artist and an Avenger?
> 
> The tag is for canon character death, ie. Tony, Nat and Vision.

They hold Nat’s funeral the day after Tony’s.

Pretty much every known hero, and then some, had showed up to honour the man the world was already starting to call saviour, sacrifice, symbol. But only those who’d known Natasha were asked to come together in her memory; that was how she’d have wanted it. The four remaining founding Avengers. The Barton family, grieving a part of themselves. Rhodey. Wanda. Sam. Fury. Carol stays, her eyes filled with memories of the past five years, burdens hefted and shared between them. Pepper, who tells a story about Nat kicking Happy’s ass the very first time they met her. Morgan, who for all her inherited brilliance is too young to truly grasp that her father and her Aunty Nat (when Laura sees this tiny dark eyed girl, realises that Nat had accrued another mischievous, mouthy niece, she turns her face into Clint’s shoulder and cried) really truly aren’t coming back, ever.

Clint writes out a list of every person whose life Nat saved over the years. It starts and ends with his name. After the main list, Bruce inserts, ‘half of all living creatures on earth’. At the start, they’d considered a Widow’s Bite, but Clint had vetoed it fiercely.

“She was more than her weapons. We all were, and we forgot it too often, and when we did we fucked up. Spectacularly.” He clenched his jaw and stared at the ground. “Back before New York she told me she wanted to wipe out the red in her ledger. Let’s burn this for her, the proof that it’s gone.”

They stand in the middle of the small grass field the alpaca lives in (Nat loved that alpaca. Pepper detested it. Tony thought it was hilarious.) Pepper, her face engraved with lines of pain, hands a RT node to Bruce. Tells him that Tony put it together, in their last weeks at the compound, in between working on the gauntlet and planning the heist.

(“So when did he sleep?”

“You know him. When did he ever sleep?”)

Tony knew someone would have to snap, knew exactly what it would do to that person. Knew that a baseline human wouldn’t survive it. (God, did he know.) But if a god, a super soldier, a Kree-enhanced warrior, or a Hulk did it? Maybe they’d survive, and maybe they’d need a fancy nanotech prosthetic. Fitted with extra fun features like repulsors. And fireworks.

Bruce looks like... like what he’s feeling is too big to be contained even in the body of the Hulk. Steve thinks he knows what that’s like, because his heart is beating a drumbeat in his ears and his breath is scraping down his throat and he has to stumble back to the house and hide in the living room, kneeling on the floor and trying to calm, for a good fifteen minutes.

Then he drags the splintered pieces of himself together and walks out that door again, because he owes them this.

Bruce lights that piece of paper - that list that would have meant so much to Natasha if she’d lived to see it - on fire with a palm held out in front of him, the posture of a ghost. The charging whine of the repulsor has many of them glancing around despite themselves, unable to curb the wild hope that Tony Stark might have beaten death one last time.

Steve keeps his eyes forward, staring at the fire until it’s branded onto the back of his eyelids. He can’t let himself hope, if he does… If he does…

The infinity stones are resting in a case made of pure vibranium, behind solid walls of steel and the almost impenetrable net of FRIDAY’s top level security. They burn in the back of his mind, the taste of possibility. Time, to bring Tony back. Soul, to turn Nat’s sacrifice around. No, he can’t. He can’t.

-

That night, Steve lies wide awake on the floor of the lakehouse, his mind a battering ram against itself. Surrounding him is the soft breathing of his friends, his family, the only people he has left in this world. At least they’re alive, he thinks, helpless. At least these many are still here, at least they might still carve out lives worth living. He’s just not sure he can.

He remembers that evening at the compound, the one that started everything. He remembers thinking bitterly that he can help other people move on but somehow can’t reach his friend right in front of him, slowly choking herself on loneliness and peanut butter sandwiches. Every time he let her down. He remembers meeting her in Wakanda and telling her what really happened in Siberia, the horrified disappointment, the cold fury in her eyes when she realised he’d broken a promise to her and kept a secret from Tony. He remembers the day he moved out of the compound, because he was too weak to take it anymore, with the echoes of Tony’s _Liar_ echoing in his head, knowing he deserved every vicious word, with the empty spaces round every corner, with Nat’s hope slowly crumbling before his eyes. But she endured. When everyone else left, she stayed. She did what he could not do.

And now in this place strewn with memories of the family Tony left behind, he can’t think of anything but those tired brown eyes, in the last looks they’d exchanged before diving into the quantum realm for the first time. How forgiveness had felt, offered in a shield under a stuffed toy and a quick, firm handshake. The echo of Tony’s last, defiant _I am Iron Man_ in his ears, and the sick terror that had unfurled in his gut when he heard that note in his voice. He’d heard that timbre too many times over the years. The first had been _I know just where to put it_ , before Iron Man took a nuke into a wormhole.

( _It should have been me_ , a traitorous part of his mind whispers.)

He’s the one with nothing to come back to. A distant part of his brain, one that sounds like Sam, tells him that this is categorically untrue and he is engaging in depressive thinking. He has the people in this room. He has Bucky, Sam, Wanda…

Before he knows it he’s stumbling out the door, feeling the chill wind on his face as he clutches the reinforced wood of the balcony. A sharp, short noise echoes and he lets go, too fast, sending himself reeling, staring at the crack his hands have made.

-

He’s jumpy the next day as they prepare to leave, touching everything too lightly, flinching away from holding anything too hard. He feels the weight of Sam’s eyes on him. Clint is watching too, frowning a little.

Rhodey is staying, and Pepper looks painfully grateful. He wonders for a moment if the rest of them ought to offer, but on the whole maybe Pepper would do better without all of them taking up her space, a visceral reminder of the world that tore Tony from her. They drive back to New York, just him and Sam - the Bartons took the jet back to their farm, taking Wanda with them, Bruce has a special van since he doesn’t fit in cars, and God forbid they dare to offer Nick Fury a lift. Sam lets the silence last for only half an hour, before he nudges Steve’s shoulder.

“So what’s with the stones then?”

“Bruce needs time to reconstruct the model. And then methodically destroy every record of time travel. He’ll contact us when it’s ready.”

“And it’s gonna be you, huh?”

“Who else?”

“I don’t know, maybe the man out of time isn’t the best person to send on our last time travelling adventure? It’s not your burden to bear, Cap.”

The nickname sounds wrong now, a discord he feels in his soul.

“I’m not going to…” He knows he sounds more defensive than is warranted.

“I know, man. That’s not what I meant. I just, you deserve a break.”

“I really don’t.” He can’t choke out anything else for a while. Sam waits, with that steady, unchanging patience he possesses. But he can’t, he can’t put any of the chaos in his head into words. He realises the seatbelt holder is caving under his fingers.

-

Tributes had begun popping up the day after the battle - flowers left strewn outside the Tower, likenesses of the arc reactor, the suit, childish drawings scrawled on cardboard, artists’ paintings on canvas. But the first one that explodes across the internet is a graffiti wall in Manhattan. Not the work of one artist, but many with spraycans, irreverent and spirited in the way New Yorkers always have been, words splayed out criss-crossing each other.

The original was just a simple painting of Tony, the sharp-edged angles and the desperate resolve in his face. Steve knows this because he might possibly have walked past that wall every single day since its conception, watching it form slowly. He’s not sure whether this is unhealthy or appropriate. There are already shots leaking of Captain America standing before Iron Man’s legacy, head bowed for his fallen friend. Instead of signing, the artist wrote three simple words at the side: _You saved us_.

The words seemed to ignite something, because every day after that there were more. A wide, blocky _LOVE IS INVINCIBL_ E. A messy purple heart. Again and again and again, _thank you, Iron Man_. Hero. Thank you. Love. Invincible. Invincible. It’s ironic, Steve thinks, as he watches a young artist - he must be Peter Parker’s age - spraypaint the latest iteration across the wall. How can they call someone invincible after he’s dead? Steve had made the mistake of thinking Tony invulnerable too many times, believing the mask of casual indifference he’d worn as impenetrable as the suit. Until he’d come and asked Tony to come fight another war with him, to leave his wife and daughter behind, because he’d never really believed the world could lose him.

Invincible.

Another artist - this one a middle-aged woman, her hair in a rough bun, her hands never-still - paints Iron Man overlaid over the lower part of the wall, pure power pouring from his outstretched hand. Steve looks and looks at that gauntlet, and suddenly he’s seeing the burnt, twisted ruin of Tony’s hand, the stones set so deeply into the armour, cleaving to metal and flesh, the smell of ash and burnt skin in his nostrils, Pepper’s low sobs in the background and Rhodey’s choked murmurs, Peter crying - uncontrolled, unrestrained, a child’s grief - Thor whispering under his breath, begging for a life already gone, and then he’s slumped in the next alleyway down retching into the drain, shaking with a violence that knocks his head into the wall, crying in great, shocking heaves that hollow his chest out. 

When he stumbles to his feet, vision still blurry from tears, he sees a fist-shaped dent in the wall and realises he put it there.

-

“You thought about what you’re gonna be up to next?”

Steve stares blankly at Sam across the cafe table. A part of him is slightly incredulous that they’re actually doing this - Captain America and Falcon are having a coffee and catch-up. Right.

“I mean, sure, the world needs Cap, but I seriously think you’re overdue for doing something just for you. I guess you covered the wild road trip last time, huh?”

“I, uh. I mean, there’s the stones…”

“No, nope, no work. Something fun. Come on. Bucky and I are gonna pick up gardening.”

“You what?” This is sufficiently distracting to yank his thoughts away from the mission he dreads and can’t wait for at the same time. He tries to picture Sam and Bucky digging, shovelling, planting. He comes up with them throwing mud at each other.

“Yeah. Gardening classes at the community centre. We’re competing. Who can grow the most ladies’ fingers.”

The thought actually makes Steve smile. He imagines two pots of green spilling over, probably grown by the sheer force of will of two of the most stubborn people he knows. Entwining. Unfolding. Nourishing.

“It’s hands on work, you know? Clint was right. Reminds us that our hands can do gentle work, too.” Sam is carefully not looking at Steve, but he knows what he’s saying. Of course Sam Wilson noticed Steve’s fidgeting, his shying away from proper contact, his refreshed awareness of how terribly strong he is. A weapon of mass destruction.

But Sam wasn’t made to be a weapon. And if anyone is owed some gentleness in his life, it surely is Bucky.

All the same, that night Steve pulls his sketchbook out of the back of a drawer, where it’s been gathering dust since - since the night he left the compound. Nat’s destroyed face, in the moment before she pulled it together enough to tell him it was fine, whatever he needed, he’d better come back to visit. Okay, no, not going there.

He fiddles around, doodles for a bit. His teammates have always been his best subject. His pencil traces the contours of Nat’s smile, the cheeky look she’d thrown them, _see you in a minute_. Bruce stepping up to the gauntlet, and everyone making way, _I was made for this_. Sam and Bucky holding twin pots of ladies’ fingers, annoyance and affection carved on their faces. Clint clutching the stones, running headfirst through the battlefield, rock hard resolve in his eyes.

As the night wears on, his mind wanders loose in time. Thor landing in Wakanda, lightning shattering the air around him, eye scarred, broken and defiant and ready to fight. Nat pointing the gun at Pierce, cool and triumphant. Tony in the workshop, wrench in his mouth, tugging wires out of yet another new gadget.

The phone rings. He jerks, and the pencil snaps. Bruce is on the line - somehow, it’s 7am the next day.

-

The mission is a blur. He shoves everything that is Steve Rogers deep, deep down, shuts it in a locked box, and lets Captain America lead the way (for the last time). Captain America knows his duty. He replaces each stone exactly where it’s meant to be. He doesn’t falter when he catches the outline of Peggy behind a door. He doesn’t flinch when he sees Natasha’s limp body at the bottom of a cliff. He punches the Red Skull in the face and then leaves. He doesn’t pause when he sees Iron Man shooting for the wormhole, just hands the Time Gem back to the Ancient One and turns away.

Steve Rogers materialises on the platform and stumbles forward, right into Bucky’s arms. He doesn’t recognise the noise he’s making - a wounded animal. He’s held, safe and firm, warm flesh on one side and cool metal on the other. Bucky breathes with him. There’s that, he clings to that. A miracle. Bucky is breathing.

“Hey, Stevie, I got you.”

“I bet on you. In the ladies’ fingers contest.”

He feels the vibration of a laugh against his cheek.

“I know.”

-

The hashtag stays at number 1 for weeks and weeks, #invincible topping the charts on every social media site that exists. Steve catches glimpses of renditions from all over the world - an Iron Man mask somewhere in Europe, candles and paintings and flowers left in front of it like an altar, like a prayer. An installation in Korea, point lights picking out the silhouette of Iron Man in his signature three point landing. Tony’s face, always and everywhere. A wild swirl of red and gold and arc reactor blue, on a remaining section of the Berlin Wall. Iron Man, glazed over with a blinding blaze of rainbows, infinity spilling over his human form, the huge canvas hung from the front of the Sydney Opera House. It’s… beautiful. It really is, he realises with surprise, although it makes his breastbone ache. He presses his hand to it, the way he saw Tony do so many times. _Very unfair, Rogers_ , he hears in his head. _Have these people never heard of the erasure of the female historical figure? C’mon, do something about it._

_(C’mon, buddy, wake up.)_

He gets up. Captain America always did work best with Iron Man annoying him into action. Or, no. Not just that, and not ever again. Steve Rogers could not have been what he was without Tony Stark.

-

By the end of the first day, he is streaked with paint, sweaty, exhausted, and has collected a gaggle of wide-eyed spectators. He tugs his baseball cap lower and ignores them, also ignoring the wry laughter of the Tony in his head, who informs him that his disguise is absolutely useless.

He calls Happy, tells him he wants privacy, just until he’s done. Happy calls Rhodey, who calls Carol, and by noon the next day he has a rotating shift of Avenger bodyguards. Bruce comes the next day, but by now he’s such a celebrity that he is utterly ineffectual as a deterrent. Instead, he sets up shop a few streets down to divert attention. Clint shows up at the end of the week, with Lila at his side, and gives him comments on the shade of Nat’s hair. Peter looks like he might start crying again, then darts around and hugs Steve so hard he thinks he hears his bones creak - super strength, indeed, this kid might actually beat him. Sam and Bucky throw paint at each other and then wrap themselves around him, one at each side, sombre. Nebula traces Tony’s outline with one extended metal finger, then turns to Rhodey and challenges him to a game of paper football.

That kicks it off. Officially a party, since there’s games now. Thor and Sam are on food duty, because A) they can fly and B) Thor is still capable of intimidating most people into giving him enough food to feed a hundred. The mayor himself declares the street off limits to the general public, so they relax their sentry duty. Pepper brings Morgan down one day, and Steve hoists her up in his arms and carefully cups her hand in his, helping her colour in the blue of the arc reactor. The Guardians show up en masse one day, and Quill lip synchs to Redbone in the middle of the street. Drax tells them about Tony pointing a giant gun at his head and the fraught origin of “Why is Gamora?” (Gamora herself is absent. But if the looks the Guardians exchange mean anything, not for long.)

That seems to break the seal on stories. Pepper tells them about Morgan finding and putting on the Rescue helmet and nearly giving Tony a heart attack. Nebula tells of their endless games in the void of space, and how confused she was when she first won one. Laura tells them about finding out that ’Natasha’ was actually ‘Nathaniel’, and the look of pure betrayal on Nat’s face. Rhodey tells them about meeting a fifteen-year-old kid at MIT, young and drunk and brilliant, who spat in the face of the sophomores muttering slurs in Rhodey's direction. Bruce tells them about the rolling crest of protective rage that had propelled the Hulk to snatch Iron Man from the air, and how that was the first time he believed that the Hulk could do good. Peter tells them about _don't do anything I would do and don't do anything I wouldn't_ , and, _I wanted you to be better_. Simultaneously the best and the most ridiculous advice he's ever received, which is Tony Stark all over. Wanda tells them about how Nat took her aside, told her Lagos was on all of them and not just her, and then trained her in control and focus until she never had to fear losing it again. Steve tells the full story of their detour to the 70s, and Scott complains about how trying to get a word in when Steve and Tony were going back and forth made him feel like an actual ant on the floor for all that he was noticed. Clint tells them about Budapest. Thor points out how indignant Tony would have been at missing out on this after 11 years of trying to pry it out of them. They laugh, and then they cry, and then they laugh again. That evening, as the sun sets over the cityscape above them, Steve holds Morgan’s hands and lets her tug him around in a circle, then a skipping step, then a soaring lift and feathersoft landing, the way she used to with her dad. He thinks of Peggy as he whirls her around clumsily. It hurts. It feels like life, like hope.

-

Steve brings one more surprise to the unveiling. He’s kept the shield in an old artist’s leather bag before, when he was trying to be inconspicuous.

The whole world is watching when they open up the street and the reporters pour in, cameras already going off. The place is bursting with Avengers. Steve feels something in his chest give when the mural comes into sight, the lines of it so familiar he can trace them in his sleep.

He’s painted a crystallised second from the last moments of the Battle of New York, seen from the eyes of Dr. Selvig. When Sam saw the shape of it for the first time, he’d laughed and told Steve he was fated to be stuck in the past. Steve pointed out that their mission had literally involved going back to the past, so Sam could suck it up. The scene is shot somewhere between a dream and a vision, edges blurred, colours melding. Nat, her lip split, blood trickling down her forehead, holds the sceptre steady, ready to pierce the sphere of energy. She’s looking off, up and to the side, her entire attention sharpened on Iron Man.Behind her, glancing off Stark Tower, Tony surges upwards, caught in motion, the bomb on his shoulders. Nat is haloed in orange, Tony in rainbow.

Mics are already being shoved in his face, questions shouted from all directions. He steps up, fingering the shield behind his back. One last time.

“Captain, why this moment? Any particular reason you chose New York?”

“We’re not lacking for portrayals of the recent battle… We all wear the scars. One day, I think, I will attempt that moment, because Tony was a dramatic idiot and I think he’d appreciate what an incredible scene he created. I am Iron Man, indeed. But most of all I think… I want us all to remember that Nat and Tony have been standing in the breach for years on years. I want us to remember that in the five long years between snaps, it was Nat who kept us going. There are orphans who are alive today in this city only because of her. I want us to remember that Tony saved us from Thanos the first time round, too, and he tried and tried to warn us about the alien threat, and none of us listened well enough. A lot of that’s on me.”

He gestures at the wall. “This is what they did, eleven years ago. This is what they fought for, that never changed. For you. For all of us.”

People are cheering, clapping. Some have pressed their hands over their hearts. Behind him, around him, Steve can tell without looking that the Avengers have closed ranks, backing him up without words. After that, it’s almost easy, a reporter at the back giving him the perfect segue into his next announcement.

“What’s in the future for the Avengers? Will someone take on the mantle of Iron Man?”

“I cannot speak for the suit. That’s been bequeathed, and rightly so, to War Machine. There may be a new young hero we ought to be looking out for, but well, he can speak for himself, if and when he wants to.” Peter, who came today as a normal teenager, is clearly trying to blend into the concrete.

“But I can speak for Captain America.”

He reaches back and draws the shield out into the light, pictures Tony repairing it, improving it, keeping it safe even when everything was broken between them.

“Captain America is a title. It’s only worth as much as we make it. The Avengers have allowed me to lead them, and given me grace when I failed to do so. This has been the greatest honour of my life. But not the only honour. And I think it’s time I passed on the shield.”

The hustle of the press has hushed completely, even the camera clicks stopping. The videocams are definitely still rolling, but he doesn’t care. He wants this on record forever. Behind him, Bucky gives Sam a shove and sends him careening out in front of the crowd. Steve bites back a smile; of course Bucky knew.

“Sam Wilson,” he says, and then runs out of words. He offers the shield. That ought to say it all.

Sam stares like he’s never seen Steve before. The most precious, deadly, valuable object either of them knows of is held out in front of him, but he doesn’t even look at it. He just looks at Steve, a million questions in his eyes.

Steve finds his voice. “My hands can do gentle work, remember? I’m gonna be the hottest new street artist, all right. I don’t think I have time to lead the Avengers. I’m a soldier. And the war is over. Maybe the world needs a gardener at the helm.”

“Shut up,” Sam says, and he takes the shield. “You’re a painter and a fighter and the worst dancer I’ve ever seen. Thanks.”

-

Steve wasn’t lying when he said he’d be busy - his mind is overflowing with ideas now, a dam released. He wants to cover the streets of New York with memories. Nat, Tony and Bruce sprawled on a table and on the floor, brainstorming in the middle of complete disarray, because he wants to remember them this way, unguarded and tired and trusting. The Hulk snapping, because Tony would never have let the world forget that it owed half its population to his science partner. Viz and Wanda, light streaming between them, tears distorting Wanda’s face, and for all that he was about to die, the most human he’d ever seen Vision look.

But first he goes back to that well-worn wall, reads the new messages that have been added since he last came. The path of the energy shooting from Tony’s palm is bright white, edged by blue and yellow, somehow untouched by dirt and grime. He grabs his own can, splashes his own contribution right down the centre of the beam. It’s a bit shaky at points, he’s never done this before, but he keeps on going ( _sometimes you have to run before you can walk_ ). He thinks he understands a bit more, now.

Invincible is how he feels when the Avengers stand shoulder-to-shoulder. It’s, _you trust me? I do_ , and knowing that with this bond mended he could face past and present and future without fear. It’s Nat hugging him in an empty church. It’s _on your left_ and the ferocious hope that had thundered in his heart when the portals started opening. And it still cuts deep, looking at that image, now with his own _invincible_ highlighted across the wall. It will hurt for the rest of his life, seeing Tony’s face. Nat’s. Vision’s. ( _A thing isn't beautiful because it lasts._ )

But invincible is the legacy they’ve left him, and Steve thinks he could spend what days he has left painting that legacy across every sidewalk, shouting it from the rooftops.

 _I can do this all day,_ he thinks, and he almost laughs as he makes his way back home.

**Author's Note:**

> The 'invincible' mural described is basically this one from FFH extras: https://www.comicbookmovie.com/spider-man/far_from_home/spider-man-far-from-home-concept-art-reveals-heartbreaking-alternate-memorials-for-the-fallen-iron-man-a171016?cp=5
> 
> Title from the Pirates of the Caribbean song.


End file.
